=The Year 1854 an Important Date.= The year 1854 is an important one in the history of Kansas, for it brings to a close the period during which this region was used as a hunting ground by the Indians and marks the beginning of its use as a home for white people. The white settlers did not come in peace and quiet; the first dozen years following 1854 were filled with hatred, struggle, and bloodshed. This was brought about by conditions outside of Kansas. As we have seen, twenty-five years earlier Kansas was made an Indian territory because people in the states wanted the lands of the eastern Indians. In 1854 a terrible conflict began here because there was a division between the North and the South on the question of slavery.
=Attitude of the North and the South Toward Slavery.= Slavery had existed in the United States since very early colonial days. It had not been profitable in the northern states, but in the cotton fields of the southern plantations slave labor was in demand, and its use after the invention of the cotton gin had increased steadily with the passing years. The Northerners had long been opposed to slavery and made every effort to keep it from spreading into northern and western territory, while the Southerners were just as determined that it should flourish and that it should be extended into new territory. This difference between the North and the South developed great bitterness. Neither side lost any opportunity to take advantage of the other, and each was anxious to secure a majority in the Senate in order to obtain favorable legislation. This matter was so carefully watched that it had long been the custom to keep the “balance of power” between the states; that is, to admit free and slave states alternately so as to keep the number of proslavery and free-state senators balanced. The North, because of its more rapid growth in population, had long had a majority in the House.
=The Missouri Compromise, 1820.= Missouri was along the dividing line between the North and the South, and when it asked to be admitted to the Union there followed a long debate in Congress as to whether it should come in slave or free. The question was finally settled by the Missouri Compromise, which provided that Missouri might come in as a slave state but that all the rest of the territory included in the Louisiana Purchase and lying north of 36° 30′, the line forming the southern boundary of Missouri, should be forever free. In other words, slavery was to be forever excluded from Kansas and the territory lying north of it.